An Improved Vogel's Approximation Method for the Transportation Problem

Determining efficient solutions for large scale transportation problems is an important task in operations research. In this study, Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM) which is one of well-known transportation methods in the literature was investigated to obtain more efficient initial solutions. A variant of VAM was proposed by using total opportunity cost and regarding alternative allocation costs. Computational experiments were carried out to evaluate VAM and improved version of VAM (IVAM). It was seen that IVAM conspicuously obtains more efficient initial solutions for large scale transportation problems. Performance of IVAM over VAM was discussed in terms of iteration numbers and CPU times required to reach the optimal solutions.